This invention concerns apparatus of table height for enabling two or four people to play a competitive game involving skillful manipulative control of a ball on a horizontal game surface.
In the well known game of Ping-Pong or table tennis, each player utilizes a paddle in a striking manner to control the movement of a light-weight, high-bouncing ball upon a horizontally disposed flat rectangular surface positioned at table height. An important requirement of Ping-Pong is to cause the ball to clear a divider net upraised from the table. Accordingly, the ball is caused to travel generally above the table, making only bouncing contact with the playing surface.
In pool or billiard games, a heavy ball is caused to traverse the playing surface in rolling contact therewith, the ball being aimed at specific targets such as other balls or depressed cups positioned about the perimeter of the playing surface.
Table-based competitive games patterned upon football, soccer or hockey principles, generally utilize a number or "team" of hand-manipulated striking members for propelling a ball upon a flat horizontal toward an opponent's "goal", usually a depressed cup adjacent the periphery of the playing surface.
The hand manipulative skills involved in the aforesaid competitive table games are so different that excellence of performance in one game will not assure excellence in another. Such games therefore provide sufficient variety to appeal to the particular interests and abilities of many people. Even further modifications of skill-based competitive table games would find widespread acceptance if characterized by novel and challenging features and greater versatility of playing modes.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide apparatus for playing a skill-based competitive table game.
It is another object of this invention to provide apparatus as in the foregoing object involving hand-manipulative control of means for striking a playing ball.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide apparatus of the aforesaid nature involving movement of a struck ball upon a flat horizontal playing surface provided with ball-receiving goals.
It is still another object of this invention to provide apparatus of the aforesaid nature for a game that can be played by 2 or 4 persons.
These objects and other objects and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following description.